A NATION AT WAR: THE COMMENTATORS; Ex-Generals Defend Their Blunt Comments

Some of the retired military leaders whose blunt statements about war strategy have rankled the Pentagon defended their right yesterday to offer frank assessments about military progress.

Gen. Barry McCaffrey, for one, took issue with suggestions yesterday by Gen. Richard B. Myers and Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, that they were out of line with their tough assessments of the military's battle plan.

''I'm quite proud to be part of an attempt to explain to the American people what's happening to their young people,'' General McCaffrey said last night on the MSNBC program ''Hardball.'' ''This war is too important to be left to the secretary alone. At the end of the day I think they ought to value my public opinion.''

General McCaffrey made his comments just moments after Senator Warner, who is the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, emerged from a meeting with General Myers and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and proposed a new standard of etiquette for retired military officers.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

General McCaffrey, of the Army, has been among the most openly critical and appears regularly on NBC and MSNBC. In an opinion article in The Wall Street Journal yesterday he expressed optimism about the campaign but wrote, ''The 'rolling start' concept of the attack dictated by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has put us in a temporarily risky position.''

Some of the retired generals said, however, that they understood Pentagon concerns and indicated that they would keep them in mind.

''I think the troops and all the people over there have done an absolutely superb job, a sensational job and the results speak for themselves,'' Gen. Wesley K. Clark, chief NATO commander during the war in Kosovo, said when asked to comment on General Myers's remarks on CNN. ''It's very unfair and difficult for anyone to criticize a war plan without having been involved in the planning process.''

General Clark himself has expressed concern about the number of American troops sent to Iraq.

Maj. Gen. Burton Moore of the Air Force, a former director of Central Command who is retired and who appears on Fox News, said he was worried that some of the criticism could hurt morale.

''If troops on the ground keep hearing from people who keep saying, 'We don't have enough forces, we don't have enough forces,' '' General Moore said, ''you can't blame some of the soldiers if they start believing it.'' But, he added: ''I don't think ex-generals, as a general statement, should be quiet. They are also free citizens.''

Broadcast network executives declined to comment, as did executives at CNN. But Erik Sorenson, president of MSNBC, said he agreed that the retired generals, speaking from climate-controlled studios, should not assume that past experience is a substitute for direct knowledge about top-secret planning. ''We've instructed our generals to be careful not to speculate on what they don't know,'' he said. ''And I don't know of anyone who has seen the war plan in our news organization.''

Correction: April 3, 2003, Thursday A picture caption yesterday with an article about former military officers whose statements about strategy have irritated the Pentagon gave a misspelled surname in some copies for a retired general who is a news analyst for NBC News. He is Barry McCaffrey, not McCaffery.